Investigating software requirements through developed questionnaires to satisfy the desired quality systems (Security attribute example)

Abstract

It is well recognized in software industry that requirements engineering is critical to the success of any major development project. Quality attributes could not be achieved without certain requirements specified by project managers that should be exhibited within the system. Thus, further research is needed to calculate the weighting factors of software quality attributes in an attempt to quantify, or in other words, to measure a software quality attribute from software project specified document. The aim of this paper is to propose a questionnaire that is designed to model one of the software quality attribute which is the security attribute and to illustrate the method used in determining the weighting factor for each question in the questionnaire. The proposed questionnaire is to elicit security requirements and its relative importance in the project under consideration for example: security could not be fulfilled without the presence of appropriate security mechanisms such as authentication, access control, and encryption, and to give a measurement for development efforts on security related feature. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010.